The Fearless (18 page)

The only obvious damage is from the weather – rotted door and window frames, and tiles missing from the roof. We kick the front door open and Lochie pushes past us, as desperate to be out of the snow as we are. When he doesn’t bark or growl, we follow him, Myo carrying a lantern and his knife, me holding the gun.

Inside, the house looks a little like Danny and April’s, but there’s less junk and more grime and cobwebs. The air is chilly and dank, and the stairs are blocked by a fall of wood and plaster.

‘I slept in one of the barns on my way down south,’ Myo says, his tone apologetic.

The front room, however, still has signs that this used to be someone’s home: a dog bed by the mouldering sofa with dust-coated toys and blankets piled in it; a kids’ rug with letters of the alphabet on it, its once bright colours dull with grime; a table in one corner, chairs arranged haphazardly around it and a doll and felt tip pens scattered across the top. On the wall above it is a huge canvas, speckled with mildew. When I go closer, I see it’s a studio portrait of the family who must once have lived here – three little kids, a woman kneeling behind them and a man with dreadlocks standing beside her with his hand on her shoulder. They look happy and healthy, like they don’t have a care in the world.

Where are they now? Were they killed or Altered? Are they roaming the country, looking for people to turn into new Fearless like the man and the girl who took Jori? A shiver twists up my spine.

At the other end of the room, we discover a fireplace, the grate half-buried by another pile of plaster. ‘Do you think the chimney’s still OK?’ I ask Myo as we clear the rubble away.

‘I reckon we should risk it, don’t you?’ His face is pinched with exhaustion and the cold, and I know I don’t look much better.

In one of the outbuildings, we discover a dresser and some old chairs, which we smash up into kindling with an axe I find in a shed.

‘I could do with a wash,’ Myo says when the fire’s built and lit and we’ve moved as close to it as we can, Lochie nosing in between us. The chimney must be OK, because the smoke spirals cleanly up it and away. I look down at myself and realize how disgusting I feel. Since leaving Danny and April’s, all our energy has been focused on riding, eating, sleeping and keeping watch for the Fearless and the Magpies. As I thaw out, I’m starting to give off a strong smell of sweat and horse. My fingernails are black with grime and my hair, which I’ve kept tied up for days, is a mass of greasy tangles. I make a face. ‘Me too.’

We unearth some large saucepans from a cupboard in the kitchen, fill them with snow and place them in the fire. ‘You go first,’ I tell Myo when the snow’s melted, averting my gaze.

I hear water splashing. ‘Crap,’ he says. ‘Can you pass me the soap out of the side pocket of my pack?’

Studiously avoiding looking at him, I find it for him. I’m expecting it to be the sort of soap we have on the island – yellowish, greasy stuff made by the barterers from ash and animal fat – but it’s a bottle with a plain label, stamped with the words LEVER 2000. It must be from the bunker.

I reach behind me to pass it to him, but he’s not where I thought he was and I have to turn round. He has his back to me, his right arm held out, and he’s wearing absolutely nothing. The first thing I notice, with a jolt, is that his bruises are almost gone. How did he heal so fast? The second thing I see is the masses of thin, silvery scars criss-crossing his forearm, and a tattoo just above his right hipbone: a tiny silhouette of a swallow, delicately inked in black with
Mara
spelled out above it in intertwined letters. I remember that flash of
something
that went between us on Danny’s porch, and heat floods my entire body.

‘Ta,’ he says as I turn away again, my heart beating harder than ever. How did he get those scars? And what does that tattoo mean? Who’s Mara? A girlfriend, I suppose.

‘OK, your turn.’ I take a deep breath and look round. He’s wrapped a couple of the blankets around himself. He sits down in front of the fire next to Lochie with his back to me, and, feeling horribly self-conscious, I strip and wash as fast as I can, using the Lever 2000 soap. It has no scent, just a clean, soapy smell, but the sensation of the lather on my skin is blissful. I take a pan of water to the sink in the kitchen to rinse my hair. When I’m done, I rinse my underwear, wrap myself in the remaining blankets and try to comb the worst of the knots out of my hair with my fingers. ‘We need to dry our clothes,’ I say. Even though I’m right by the fire, and the blankets are thick, I can still feel the cold nipping at my skin.

Myo points at the dining table. ‘What about those chairs? We could put them near the fire and drape our things over them.’

We drag the chairs across. Sour-smelling steam rises off our clothes as they begin to dry. I wish we could wash everything, not just our underwear.

When we’ve eaten, Myo stares into the fire. I watch him surreptitiously, looking at him properly for the first time. He has a slightly upturned nose, a wide, serious mouth and a thick fringe of black lashes around his right eye. The light from the flames casts shadows under his jaw and in the hollows of his cheekbones. I remember how he looked when I passed him the bottle of soap, and look away, my heart beating faster.
Don’t even GO there
, I tell myself sternly.

When our clothes are dry we pull them back on, laying the blankets out in front of the fire. ‘I’ll go and check on the horses,’ Myo says. ‘Then I’ll do the first watch if you like.’

I nod, stretching out beside Lochie. I’m warmer than I’ve been for days, and I can feel exhaustion sinking into my bones like cement. Myo takes the gun and goes out of the room, and I close my eyes.

Outside, it’s started snowing again. As I trudge across to the barn, I flip my eyepatch up so I can see better in the dark and think about Cass handing me that bottle of soap, wondering how much she saw. I know she looked, ’cos she couldn’t quite meet my eye afterwards. The scars on my left arm are much worse than on the right, purple and angry-looking even after all this time. I haven’t cut for years now, but at one time it was the only way I could cope with what had happened.

The horses are at the far end of the barn, munching on the last of the hay. I check them over, wondering what Ben will say when I turn up at the bunker with a stranger. We’ve had no outsiders there for years. Stuck up on the moors in the middle of nowhere, it’s easy to pretend the outside world doesn’t exist, and that’s how we like it.

But Cass and I are in this together now. I’d never’ve been able to stop that Fearless guy at Danny’s by myself. I have no idea how we’ll get Mara and her brother back without her finding out Mara’s Fearless, but there must be a way. There has to be. And when I’m not so knackered, maybe I’ll be able to figure it out.

When I get back, Cass is already asleep, her hair fanned out around her head. I sit down on one of the chairs, the gun across my lap. The old house creaks and groans around me. Riding will be slow tomorrow, but I still think we can make it back by nightfall.

I look over at Cass again, remembering that moment on the porch when she touched my arm. It makes me go hot and cold all over. What was that?

My eyes keep wanting to close, but every time my head sags forward I snap awake again. It’s been the same every night since Danny and April died. Two of my friends, dead, at the hand of my own twin. And she could have been dead too if I hadn’t stopped Danny from cutting her throat. I feel guilty because I couldn’t stop it from happening, guilty because I couldn’t save Danny, guilty for being relieved that Mara got away, guilty that she has Tessie and probably Cass’s brother, too. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Maybe it’s crazy, trying to help her, but she’s all the family I’ve ever had. Our ma and da were junkies and we got taken away from them when we were two, after the police found us on our own in their shitty flat where we’d been left for two days with no food or water. We were passed around a few foster families, then put in a home. All we had to rely on was each other. Even after she was Altered, I couldn’t abandon her. Thank God Ben and the others agreed to take her in.

But I should’ve got there sooner . . . I should’ve stopped them from getting shot . . . I should’ve stopped Mara taking Tessie . . .

Cass gives a cry, making me jump. She’s having a bad dream, her face twisted, her arms twitching, her eyes rolling behind their lids. Lochie lifts his head, looking at her with his ears up. I put the gun down on the floor and kneel beside her. ‘Cass,’ I say softly. ‘Wake up.’ When she doesn’t respond, I say it louder. With a gasp, she sits up, clutching at me like she’s drowning and pressing her face against my chest. I can feel her heart pounding through her back, and smell soap and the smoke from the fire in her hair. I get waves of that hot and cold feeling again and scramble back, embarrassed and confused, my own heart pounding almost as hard as hers was. ‘Are – are you OK?’ I stutter. ‘What were you dreaming about?’

She gathers her blanket around her. ‘We were out on the road – me, you and Lochie – and the Magpies came, but I was frozen to the road and couldn’t move. The ice was all over me. They’d done it to trap me because they thought I was Fearless. And then you disappeared . . .’

She’s shivering, even though the room’s still warm. ‘It’s just a dream,’ I say.

‘I know, but I had the exact same one at Danny and April’s, just before the Fearless got into the house.’

‘That doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen again.’

She looks at me like she doesn’t know whether to believe me or not. I can feel where she was pressed against me, like she’s imprinted on my skin.

‘Do you want me to go and check outside?’ I say, wondering if Cass’s dream means Mara is out there somewhere again.

‘Yes.’

I start to get up. ‘No. Stay here,’ she says.

I cross my legs, settling myself a little more comfortably, my skin still tingling all over for no good reason I can think of. The firelight makes a halo around her hair. I catch myself staring at her for a second too long, and have to make myself look away.

‘I hate them,’ she says suddenly.

Startled, I look round at her again. ‘Who?’

‘The Fearless. Who do you think?’

I nod, trying to ignore the coldness rising in the pit of my stomach.

And trying to push away the image of Mara that jumps into my head.

‘They’re evil,’ Cass says. ‘I wish there was a way to get rid of every last one of them.’

The tingling on my skin has disappeared. Instead, I feel like a gap has opened up between us, a hundred miles wide.

I get to my feet. ‘I think I will check outside. Better safe than sorry.’

I pick up the gun and walk out of the room without looking back.

I have no idea what I said to Myo to make him walk off like that, but the next morning, he’s gone from not speaking much to barely speaking at all. When I remember his arms around me after I woke up from that nightmare, and then how he jerked away from me, I feel a thud of disappointment in my stomach, followed by a wave of embarrassment.

Maybe
that’s
it
, I think as we pack up and damp down the fire, ready to leave.
Maybe he’s embarrassed too. Maybe he’s worried you’ll read something into it
.

But why would he like you like that?
I tell myself as we head out to the barn. It’s still dark, but the clouds have gone, stars shimmering overhead.
Why would YOU like him like that? You hardly even know each other.

And then I wonder why I’m even thinking about this. I swing myself up onto Flicka, my face warming up.

‘Want the gun?’ Myo says as he climbs onto Apollo. Apollo’s ears twitch back at the sound of his voice, first one, then the other. It’s like the up-down movement of Lochie’s eyebrows; the horses are always listening, even when you’re not speaking directly to them.

‘You carry it.’ I’m not quite able to look at him. ‘My hands are too cold.’

He grunts something that sounds like, ‘OK,’ and leans forward to adjust Apollo’s bridle, not looking at me either. We ride out of the barn with Lochie loping alongside.

As we head further north, the sun rises on a transformed world. Everything is white and glittering, the snow stretching away either side of us as far as we can see. It’s so dazzling we have to wrap our scarves around our faces, leaving a gap just big enough for our eyes. If Myo’s calculations are correct, it’s our last day of travelling, and now we’re almost there, the reality of what I’m doing is sinking in. I’ve left my home and will probably never be allowed back. I’ve travelled hundreds of miles with a boy who’s still practically a stranger, and who blows hot and cold on me for seemingly no reason. I’m about to enter a community that could be even more hostile to outsiders than Hope. And, if nothing terrible happens to me there, I’m going willingly into a Fearless lair. I want to ask Myo what the people at the bunker are going to do when I turn up there, but I can’t be bothered when I know all I’ll get is shrugs and grunts.

It will all be worth it if I can get Jori back
, I tell myself, and as Myo and I ride on through the snow, it becomes a mantra, keeping all other thoughts and anxieties at bay. As long as I have that tiny thread of hope inside me that my brother’s still alive, that I’ll reach him in time, I can face anything and anyone. And I pray we can get Tessie back, too.

That afternoon, it clouds over and starts to snow again.

‘We need to head over the moors now,’ Myo says as flakes of snow spiral down from the sky, the first words he’s spoken to me since we set off from the farm. He’s pointing to a rocky ridge that looks like the backbone of a dinosaur. ‘The bunker’s on the other side of that hill.’

It’s hard going once we leave the road. The snow limits visibility, and hides rocks and gullies on the ground. Only Lochie seems to navigate the slopes without trouble, bounding ahead of us. We try to follow him as closely as possible, but my heart is in my mouth the whole time.